Letters | 17 January 2009

Selective facts

Sir: Matt Ridley’s article on Darwin’s vision (‘Natural selection explains everything’, 10 January) omits one simple but very important fact, namely that Darwin did not originate natural selection. How do we know?

Simple — both he and Alfred Russel Wallace gave the credit to Patrick Matthew and Charles Wells. Darwin even described Matthew’s version of natural selection as ‘precisely’ the same as his own, which appeared some 20 years later. These facts will doubtless be conveniently lost in this year’s Darwinfest of hype.

Dr Milton Wainwright
University of Sheffield

Sir: Matt Ridley’s remark that ‘technology also experiences progress and “arms races” through the world’ does not support his idea that the ‘internet is increasingly Darwinian’, let alone that Darwinism explains everything. Darwinism explains evolution by saying what happens to inherited characteristics. But culture, science and economics are acquired, not inherited. The internet develops through diversity, learning and adaptation. To use a more modern metaphor, genetic evolution is digital while culture is analogue.

John Howkins
London W1




Sophisticated, moi?

Sir: Paul Johnson (And another thing, 10 January) writes that, ‘In 1947 C.S. Lewis told me…’ He goes on to say, ‘The surest sign of a failure in sophistication is name-dropping.’

Michael Grosvenor Myer
Cambridge




Not quite critic

Sir: I assume your distinguished opera critic was given a free pair of prime stalls seats (cost £360), presumably so that he could review the performance of Turandot for your publication (Arts, 10 January). Because he did not like Elizabeth Connell (the last-minute replacement in the eponymous role, much lauded by several of the national broadsheets) and detected oncoming hoarseness in the tenor, Michael Tanner decided not to stay for Act III. How can a critic write any review of this opera without experiencing how the tenor meets the challenge (and expectation) of ‘Nessun Dorma’, the death of Liù (some of Puccini’s most beautiful and moving music) and the soaring challenges for the two main singers that climax this great work? How can anyone interested in opera not want to stay to the end of this work? Mr Tanner’s feeble joke about going one better than the composer (who did not finish Act III) does not make up for this irresponsible — and I would have thought unprofessional — attitude.